Sunday
01/28/18 Freeville/Homer Avenue UMC’s
Sermon Title: “God vs. god”
Old Testament
Scripture: Deuteronomy 18:15-20
New Testament
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Gospel Lesson:
Mark 1:21-28
My dear friends, my brothers and sisters, welcome once again
on this the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. Four Sundays after the Wise Men or
Magi came to Jesus one way, but left transformed and different. We will be in
this season after the Epiphany until Sunday February 11th, when we
have our Transfiguration Sunday and Scout Sunday.
With this said, I want to talk to you briefly this morning about
school. Yes that’s right, I said school. Many of us can remember elementary
school, middle school, and of course high school. Maybe some of us played
sports, had our first crush, had your first boyfriend or girlfriend, and in my
case might have been the vice president of the chess club.
When we think back to high school, we remember the prom,
football games, home coming, and etc. Many of us also remember some of our
teachers, both good and bad. Further, some of us remember the subjects that we
really liked or loved, as well as the subjects that we didn’t like at all.
I always loved social studies, physical education or gym,
science, lunch, shop class, art and artistic classes, and of course study hall.
I also liked Home Economic to, and here is why, one semester of High School,
when I was a junior or a senior, I noticed that the majority of girls that I
knew signed up for Home Economics. So, I decided to sign up for Home Economics.
What I didn’t do though, was tell any of my male friends about this decision.
So the new semester started, and all my male friends were of course in Shop
Class, and I was in Home Economics. I was picked on for a while for this, until
one of my friends was walking by one of the Home Economics classrooms. As my
friend was walking by he looked in the classroom and noticed about twenty-five
girls and two boys, myself included.
Well, at lunch that day, I went from being picked on to
being called a “genius” and “so smart”. The next semester, virtually all of my male
friends signed up for Home Economics, and I think it was one of the biggest
groups of boys that they ever had in the class.
Some
of my friends in High School seemed to be solid in every single subject. I was never
good at a lot of the math classes that I took though, and I struggled in English.
Don’t get me wrong, I could write a good essay or a paper, but the punctuation,
or the “rules of writing”, well they still confuse me sometimes, even today.
Despite watching various “School House Rocks” videos, I still make grammatical mistakes.
Sometimes I still forget a comma, and things like that. Anyone else here
sometimes have English grammar issues to?
I remember a few years ago when I was preparing to
interview to become a Provisional Elder in our United Methodist Church Conference,
my mentor, Rev. Harold Wheat, agreed to read by big theology and practice of
ministry paper. I think that this paper was about 35-40 pages, and to be honest
the first draft was very rough. I mean very rough! So rough, that if I get
approved for ordination this year, I am going to buy Pastor Harold a t-shirt
that says “Grammar Police” on it. One day in fact, during the proof reading, he
called me complaining that I had too many “dangling participles”. Then I asked
him of course, “What the heck is a dangling participle”?
We have rules for writing then. When we start a new
sentence for example, what are we supposed to do to the first letter of the
first word in each sentence? That’s right! Capitalize the letter.
In this morning’s reading from the Apostle Paul’s first epistle
or letter to the Corinthians, I could point to various categories of English writing
and grammar. What I want to focus on though, is the Apostle Paul’s usage of the
word God. In this scripture from 1 Corinthians for this morning, the Apostle
Paul is talking about food sacrificed to Idols. This is to say, the food that was
sacrificed, blessed, or directly connected to a god, force, or power, other
than the God that the Apostle Paul believed in. If you asked a statue of the
god Zeus to bless your food for example, the Apostle Paul would say that you
were eating food sacrificed to idols.
What is interesting in this reading to me though, is how
the Apostle Paul uses the word God. Let’s look again at this reading, specifically
1 Corinthians 8:5-6 that says:
“Indeed, even though
there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many
gods and many lords—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all
things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all
things and through whom we exist”
(1
Cor. 8:5-6, NRSV).
If you’re not looking already in your Bible, or a Church
Bible, I would invite you to turn to 1 Corinthians 8. What I find interesting,
is that when the Apostle Paul refers to gods that are not his God, he spells
gods with a lower case g. Yet, when he refers to the Jewish or Christian God,
he uses an upper case G.
Remember English grammar and writing and Pastor Paul are
not the best of friends. Well real quick, once again this scripture from 1
Corinthians for this morning is about eating food sacrificed to idols. The Apostle
Paul tells us to only eat food sacrificed to our God, and to not to other gods.
So who is our God once again, according to the Apostle Paul? The Apostle Paul
writes in 1 Corinthians 8:6 once again:
“yet for us there is one God, the
Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus
Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1
Cor. 8:6, NRSV).
The
Apostle Paul in this passage is saying that if you are claiming that your God
is thee God, the only God, or the highest of all Gods, than you use a capital “G”
to write God. If you think that your god is among many other gods than you use
a lower case “g”. When we write the word God, how we write it is therefore, significant.
If we write someone a letter and at the end of that letter write with a lower
case “g” “god bless you,” we are technically saying may a god not thee God bless
you. When we write “God bless you” with an upper case “G” we are saying may the
one true God of Israel that is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit bless you. Do
you see the difference?
Many
of us have probably written God with a capital G or a lower case g and have
never thought about the significance of what we are writing. Yet, if you look
in your Bibles at what the Apostle Paul wrote this morning in 1 Corinthians, it
is clear that he is distinguishing his God from all other gods.
So
are you an upper case “G” God person, or are you a lower case “g” god person. A
friend of mine that is an orthodox rabbi who lives in Ohio will always write
the word “G-d” to me like this, capital G, a dash, and then a lower case d. You
see this rabbi capitalizes the G of God, but many Jews do not write the full name
of God, as it is so holy that you cannot even write it in its entirety.
The
Apostle Paul is then making the argument this morning that the only true God is
God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is certainly a strong claim.
What do you think?
On
page 65-66 of our United Methodist Church Book of Discipline, we define God in
our first Article of Religion on page 65-66. This is what it says:
“Article
I—Of Faith in the Holy Trinity ‘There is but one living and true God,
everlasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness;
the maker preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of
this Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity—the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost” (BOD, 65-66).
This
definition not only capitalizes the word God, but makes a claim that there is
one living and true God. What do you say, do you believe that there is only one
true and living God? It is my hope that after today we consider what we are
doing when we write the word God. For me, when I am talking about my faith,
when I write about the God that I believe in, it is always with a capital G.
In
effort to connect this to our gospel of Mark reading for this morning, in this
morning’s gospel reading, Jesus is teaching in Synagogue in Capernaum on the
Sabbath Day (Mk. 1:21-28, NRSV). The gospel says that Jesus taught in a way
that astounded people, and that Jesus even cleansed and healed a man of an unclean
spirit. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, was the fullness of the grace and truth
of God. The gospel lesson ends with Mark 1:28 saying:
“At once
his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee” (Mk. 1:28, NRSV).
The
power that Jesus possessed, the truth that he possessed, and authority that he
possessed, to me, was clearly from the one true God.
So
once again, when you talk about our God, our God that is Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, are you speaking of a god, or thee God? When you write the word God,
whether the G is a capital or not is more significant according the Apostle
Paul than most people realize. So is your God a big G or a little g. God bless
us all, with a big G. Amen.
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